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With improved facilities, such as numerous indoor pitches with artificial grass, Iceland has been developing better and more technically gifted players.
Iceland’s strength always used to be the battling spirit, strong defense and physical strength. Now their players are getting better and better technically, and for the first time, their national team actually has stronger offensive players than defenders, although their defenders are also quite good.
With better facilities and better players, more and more players are going abroad. The Icelandic league isn’t that strong, and the best players leave the country in search of better opportunities.
The Dutch Eredivise has been sort of a “development” league for a long time. It‘s a good league with good footballers, but players who do good there end up going to the best leagues in Europe. This is nothing new.
For Icelandic players, the Dutch Eredivisie has been a great stepping stone towards the bigger leagues. Eidur Gudjohnsen started out at PSV, playing alongside the Brazilian Ronaldo, before he got a serious injury – possibly due to medical negligence - and ended up having to start from scratch. But, anyhow, the rest is history.
Aron Einar Gunnarsson, the present captain of the Icelandic national team, went from his boyhood club Þór Akureyri to AZ Alkmaar and ended up going to Coventry, and then Cardiff, who are now at the top of the Championship division.
Grétar Rafn Steinsson also went to AZ Alkmaar and then to Bolton. After a successful career in England, he now plays for Kayserispor in Turkey.
The point is, being able to join an Eredivisie team is clearly a very good sign for the Icelandic footballer, as well as footballers from other countries. Therefore, it’s very positive for Icelandic football that there are so many players playing in one the better leagues in Europe.
After two Icelandic players joined Eredivisie clubs in January, they now have no less than six players in the league. For a country of just over 300,000 people, that’s not bad at all!
Alfreð Finnbogason joined Heerenveen last autumn and has been tearing the league apart. Despite playing for one of the league‘s lowest ranked teams, he is the joint second-highest goalscorer with 15 goals. He scored four goals in a single cup game as well. Definitely a good sign.
Kolbeinn Sigthorsson
The biggest name, albeit a lot of injuries recently, is Ajax’s number nine, Kolbeinn Sigþórsson. He marked his comeback last week with two goals after coming on as a substitute in a cup game, and he is a striker who bangs in the goals when he’s fit. Hopefully he can put his injuries behind him and reach new heights at Ajax – the team spent a fortune on him after he blossomed with AZ Alkmaar.
AZ Alkmaar is a team that has always been fond of Icelanders. Since Sigþórsson left the club for Ajax, Jóhann Berg Guðmundsson has been the Icelandic “ambassador” in Alkmaar. He joined the youth team from Breiðablik and fought to become a regular in the first team. The 22-year-old winger has been playing a lot recently and just earned his 100th cap for AZ Alkmaar last month.
In January, another Icelander, striker Aron Jóhannsson joined AZ. He came to the club from AGF in Denmark, where he‘s been in astonishing form this season and left the club as the Superliga‘s joint topscorer, despite being injured for a while. If he keeps this form, he can be a real success in the Netherlands.
Then there is Guðlaugur Victor Pálsson, known abroad only as Victor Pálsson, who plays for NEC Nijmegen. He joined the Liverpool reserve team from AGF, but didn’t quite manage to fight his way into the senior team. From Liverpool, he went to the Scottish Premier League side Hibernian, and from there he went to the huge American club New York Red Bulls, where he played alongside Thierry Henry and Rafael Marquez.
Pálsson has been a very good player for Nijmegen since he came there on loan before this season. In fact, he was so good that Nijmegen tied him down until the year 2016. He was rewarded with his first call-up to the senior national team for a friendly against Russia on February 6th. So, this move to the Netherlands is definitely working out for him after falling out of order in the Big Apple.
Rúnar Már Sigurjónsson, a 22-year-old midfielder, just joined PEC Zwolle from Icelandic side Valur. The leap between the two leagues is huge, but Sigurjónsson was one of the best players in Iceland last summer, and it was evident that he‘d be going abroad.
Most people expected him to join a side somewhere in Scandinavia, but he got the chance to go to Holland and hopefully he will do well there. He has certain qualities that make him a terrific midfielder, and it will be interesting to see whether he gets the chance to help PEC Zwolle fight for their place in the league.
In addition to the six aforementioned players, there are a few younger players who now have the chance to train in Holland and break into the senior sides. With all respect to Icelandic football, there’s no question that you can learn more and develop better as a player in Holland, so their future might very well be bright.
Either way, there is a real Icelandic invasion in the Dutch Eredivisie. Although it’s very satisfactory for an Icelandic player to have a career in the Netherlands, on can only hope that they follow the footsteps of Dutch stars such as Robin van Persie, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Wesley Sneijder and have a successful career in even bigger leagues.
